It's a sad day for Denis. An hour ago he came home and found under the door the army summons. You must arrive in less than 24 hours at the military office to check in and leave for your destination. He must bring with him a change of clothes and food for two days.
Denis has contacts in Odessa, found out where they were going to send him and they told him not to worry, that he will only be an assistant in a shooting center against Russian drones and planes, that he will not have to go to the line of fire. Denis doesn't want to join the battle on the field because he doesn't want to kill anyone. Their faith, their way of understanding life, forbid it. They tell him he won't have to, but he knows from friends that once you check in at the office, they can send you anywhere. “An acquaintance was because they called him, thought he was going to help with transfers, and they sent him to the front line,” he says.
The worst scenario for him would be to be sent to Mykolaiv, where the closest combat is taking place. The city is considered a containment barrier for Odessa: if Mykolaiv falls (117 kilometers from Odessa), the Russians will be within walking distance of trying to enter. In addition, 14 invading ships were tracked on Tuesday making movements in the Black Sea, near the shores of the great southern city.
Denis only had six hours of training last week. He signed up as a volunteer himself and went to a center in the city where every day, from Monday to Monday, they train between 100 and 120 people in basic weapons handling, military strategy and urban combat. It is a huge building (whose location must be kept secret for security reasons), where army instructors train civilians for six hours. They have four distinct classes: urban combat tactics, firing positions, arming and disarming weapons, and first aid in war situations.
When Denis took the course, he didn't think he was going to need it. He almost did it as if it were a game, and even posted on his Instagram different photos smiling with a kalashnikov. But now he's been called to enlist and he's afraid. He is 36 years old and is a gastronomic businessman. In his restaurant he employs 50 people, and he also owns a garment design gallery. “I serve more to help with humanitarian tasks, moving my contacts to get things for Odessa, moving groceries, people... I'm not good for combat, I can't do it,” he says now, sitting in his car, nervous, scared.
Denis is a cheerful person who believes in energies, in non-traditional medicine, in meditation. He likes to go dancing, lie on the beach to sleep. One day before the summons, he actually took a nap facing the black sea, on the sand. And we joked about the possibility that the Russians would have stopped a landing so as not to wake it up. Now he lost some of his joy, and although he tries not to lose his mood, he is tense. He makes calls to friends and acquaintances, is looking for a way to be excused, a safe conduct that frees him from enlisting.
Earlier, touring the city with him, we were able to go to the training center where he trained a week ago. Thanks to their contacts, and after insisting for several days, we accessed the place and allowed us to film. The only condition was not to show the face of the instructors or reveal the location. We accept. From then on, reality became a surreal film installed on a war set.
Every day, those who want to take the course arrive at 8:30 in the morning. They sign up, leave their data, and go to a first theoretical class all together. There they receive the first instruction, which is not technical but motivational. They explain to them the importance of this struggle, they tell them what is at stake, they convince them of what many, even though they are there, are not convinced: weapons are necessary for peace.
At ten o'clock technical instruction begins. They separate the group into four subgroups and are divided into different sectors of the building. In the central area, lessons are given in urban combat tactics. They start with the basics: how to handle the weapon, in what positions to have it depending on the situation, how to walk with it, how to put your feet, shoulders. In the second module they learn combat moves: group advances, cross covers, signs of attack and retreat.
They do everything with real weapons, the same ones they will give them if they are called to combat. Not everyone seems equally convinced. In the faces, attention is mixed to learn how to handle the weapon with a certain bitterness. None of those I see seem to be Rambo in touch with his mission. Rather, already into the 21st day of the war, those who come to training today are those who in principle preferred to avoid it but mobilized out of fear or conviction, finally decided that it was better to know than not to know.
In the first aid class you mainly learn how to make tourniquets, one of the most common requirements in a theater of war. Also, to manipulate an injured body and do CPR. The other two groups are those of arming and cleaning the gun and the shooting group. The first one tries to familiarize students with the AK47. They teach them to assemble it from scratch, disarm it, and reassemble it. Also, how to load it, techniques to correct errors and the different shooting modes. After that, it is only a matter of repeating the process over and over again until the rifle becomes a familiar object to them. They are seen concentrating, arming and disarming as if it were a race, trying to win each other in speed.
“I came because I want to help save my country. It is very important to know these things, especially at a time like this. And because I needed to remember the training, which I did three years ago, but I don't remember everything then with this day I'm ready again,” says Leon, a 23-year-old citizen of Odessa.
“In times like these we need to be together and strong. And training is very useful because all of us who are here have to have tools to know how to survive in combat,” he adds.
Next to him is Tatyana, 21 years old. He says he finds it very funny to be learning this, but he takes it seriously. She is not a convinced fan of war, but rather the opposite: she took a long time to take a stand on the conflict. “At first it was very confusing what was going on here. It wasn't easy for me to choose a side, but now, after several days of fighting, it's already more obvious what's going on, and I have a lot more motivation to fight for my country,” he says.
His speech is not strange in Odessa, a city in which more Russian is spoken than Ukrainian, and in which for many years Ukrainians without Russian ancestry were treated as citizens of poorer quality. Today, pro-Russian sentiment was buried by the actions of the invasion: no one did as much to consolidate Ukrainian identity as Vladimir Putin.
“The biggest motivation is to save peace in Ukraine, and leave a better country for the boys, so that they can grow up happily,” says Maria, another girl who attends the training. She came with Larissa, her friend, who says something similar: “The biggest motivation is to save Ukraine's independence, make it better, and that there will be lasting peace in the future.”
Shooting class happens in the darkest classroom. The instructor gives his opening speech. Everyone listens. A girl smiles for something that makes her funny and the professor - a career military man - tells her something that looks like a scolding. It seems again a moment of Full Metal Jacket (Born to Kill). She asks for forgiveness but keeps smiling. A while later, when her friend is learning to put on her bulletproof vest and helmet, she will take pictures of her to put them on Instagram. Some of that began to happen in Odessa: military training became a small furore of networks and it became a fashion to pose with a gun. Never before has a network trend taken so many so far.
The class is strict. The instructor teaches them the basics when aiming, shows them how to put their hands on the rifle, where to rest the cheek, how to look. Then, the same thing body to ground. He tells them to use the sandbags to support the gun, teaches them to harden the position. Once ready, he kicks the tip of the rifle to see how stiff it is. If they leave it soft, they can hurt themselves at the first shot. Everything, he says, is for his safety. Meanwhile, I record the tips of the rifles, which point towards me, towards the camera. They're unloaded, maybe it feels strange. Later, after a few hours there, I will also be familiar with the noises of the trigger, the color of the metal, the weight of the ammunition. Everyone, with more or less resignation, is getting used to the war.
More than 1,500 civilians have already passed through the Odessa training center. Those who express their willingness to continue with the training move to new instances of training with the Territorial Defenses or even with the army. According to one of the local coordinators, no one is obliged to fight nor can they be called to combat because they participated in the training. It is, they say, about being prepared in case it is necessary. “If the situation rushes, of course we will have to defend the city and give each one a weapon. But at the moment it's just a matter of teaching them the basics. Of course it's not enough, but it's a first contact. Nobody leaves here with a gun,” he says.
Denis's experience somewhat contradicts the official voice. Last week he was also here and it was the first military training of his life. He also uploaded photos and videos to Instagram, and posed as if he were a legendary warrior. In all the photos - I saw them, I see them - he looked happy, provocative, half anachronistic. His life was more like The Clockwork Orange than Born To Kill, violence was a form of toy available, not a concrete possibility. But this morning he got the summons and he's afraid. He will go to Rivne to see a relative with influence in the army to try to save him. Their fear and despair are also war. He asks me not to put his picture because he is still ashamed not to be willing to kill.
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